Electronic devices such as mobile terminals, personal complex terminals, and digital TV sets have become necessities of current society based on development of electronic communication industries. The electronic devices have been developed into important means of information transmission, which can quickly change. Internet access has been propagated to the electronic device, and the electronic device has provided a variety of media contents based on the Internet.
Notably, recently, these electronic devices may share media contents such as music and photos with one another. For example, a number of electronic devices may have a Digital Living Network Appliance (DLNA) function. Electronic devices with a WiFi wireless network function may reproduce media contents with one another through an Access Point (AP) by a wireless home network technical standard using the DLNA function.
FIG. 1A illustrates a general data structure of contents.
Referring to FIG. 1A, contents 100 includes a header 101 and contents data 103. The contents data 103 denotes data to be actually transmitted, and the header 101 denotes data supplementing the contents data. For example, in image contents, a header may denote information such as a size of an image, resolution of the image, and the number of colors.
FIG. 1B is a communication flowchart illustrating a general process of sharing contents between devices.
Referring to FIG. 1B, a contents receiving device and a contents providing device are connected wirelessly or by wire (block 101). If one of a plurality of contents provided from the contents providing device is selected at the contents receiving device (block 103), the contents receiving device requests the contents providing device to transmit a header of the selected contents (block 105). The contents providing device transmits the header of the selected contents to the contents receiving device (block 107). The contents receiving device requests the contents providing device to transmit contents data of the selected contents (block 109). The contents providing device transmits the contents data of the selected contents to the contents receiving device (block 111). The contents receiving device reproduces the corresponding contents using the received header and contents data (block 113). As described above, the contents receiving device sequentially requests the contents providing device to transmit a header and contents data of contents to be reproduced and receives the requested header and contents data. In this process, time until the corresponding contents are reproduced is delayed.